RSVP postcard with country twang options
What are you going to do when you don’t live in the same country as your wedding location and 98% of your guests? You enrol someone to do it for you–in our case, my amazing mom and Maid of Honor, Katie! Oh, and Vistaprint.
First of all, one of our bridesmaids, Christy, designed our INCREDIBLE country-kitsch, embroidery-themed wedding invitations. We went for using the word ‘marriage’ in the invites instead of ‘union’ even though the road to marriage equality for California will be a bit longer. Once she’d finished the basic design, she uploaded it onto Vistaprint–her recommendation–for our viewing and editing pleasure. Part of me cringes to think what kind of operation Vistaprint’s got going to be able to allow me to order so many things for free; then again, one wedding is expensive, two weddings gets even pricier! (My conscious is only slightly relieved by the fact that I can order with recycled paper, but even then…). Once we finalized the invitation and RSVP design with a tweak here and a tweak there, we agreed on the designs and got ready to order.
Wedding invitations with front and back view
Meanwhile, many conversations were taking place with my mom back in California about how to actually execute the mailing once the invitations + RSVP postcards were ordered. We decided it was going to require a few things: return address labels, guest address labels, envelopes, time + helpers for stuffing envelopes, wedding stamps and international stamps. The return address labels we could order from Vistaprint along with the invite package–one set for my parent’s address, and one set for our address in the UK (with the thought that at least that way all the guests would have our address here!). For the guest address labels, we decided I would gather all of the family/friends addresses and type them into a speadsheet in Excel. Then, once I knew which labels my mom & dad had bought, I would mail merge the spreadsheet into the correct Avery template in Word and email that document to my mom for printing. I can now say gathering addresses was a task, but the rest was a breeze!
The envelopes came with the invites and my mom coordinated with MOH Katie, who lives nearby, to pick a night to be invitation sending machines! My dad supplied them with tea and snickerdoodles to keep them going–and I’m sure teased them just to make sure they knew they were loved…
Boot scooting return address labels
Once we had done our ordering and typing part on this side of the Atlantic, then it was a game of wait and watch the post for our invitation to arrive. I have to say, that was the hardest part: knowing my mom and best friend were putting our invites together, not being able to be there or see them before there were done… But, the morning after the invitation party took place, I got a photo emailed from my dad of the two of them with their stacks of invites! And then, a week later, ours arrived in the post.
The back of the RSVP card…
The best part has been hearing from my mom as the RSVP cards have arrived in her mail box. We received all the RSVPs for the UK wedding and I’m glad my mom gets to share in that excitement this time round. Also, some people are RSVP’ing online on our wed-site so we do get to see some of the responses as well!
These are great! Way to utilize VistaPrint- we just got our STDs in the mail and we used the postcard template as well…when you’re on a tight budget, you have to be resourceful!
They look great- you nailed the theme!
[...] to itchin’. It was time to make something for our wedding: our cake topper.Inspired by our rainbow ‘cross-stitch’ RSVP cards, I pulled out our copy of the card, my grid paper, a pencil off Alex’s desk and my favorite [...]